He had frozen, his hand still outstretched, staring at the space where I had been. A shiver racked his frame. He’d felt it. The chill of my ghost touching him. He turned, his eyes wide with dawning, horrified understanding. He could see me. He could feel the bond. But he couldn’t hold me.
“Angel,” I begged, wanting to fix this somehow, while fearing him being here at all in this strange place between where the hounds stalked and no others existed.
He blinked, head cocking to the side, lips tightening. “Jude?”
A fresh slice of panic.Didn’t he recognize me?Was I some sort of skeleton like Nat’s Reaper form?
I knelt at his side, my hands hovering just over the lines of his face, aching with the memory of touch. “Hey,” I said, the lamest syllable in any universe.
“I can’t hear you,” he said with furrowed brows.
My soul, or whatever passed for it now, lurched. This was a new circle of hell. To be right here, to be seen, and yet to be unreachable.
A low, collective growl cut through the silence. A rumbling chorus vibrated up through the stone floor of the ruined library. A dozen pairs of burning-coal eyes ignited. From behind the toppled carcasses of bookshelves, emerging from every shadow, corner, and doorway, more appeared, accompanied by the wet, sizzling hiss of molten drool hitting stone, burning this time, and catching the nearby books on fire. More than a dozen crowdedaround us, in a circle of heat, shadow, and dreadful promise, cutting off any path of escape.
“Well, fuck,” I cursed, uncertain if they were there for Angel or me, or both of us.
A giant of a hellhound took a heavy step forward, molten jaws peeling back in a silent snarl, and Angel, my beautiful, stubborn, and impossible Angel, bared his human teeth right back at it, pulling himself up to his feet as if he could change and fight them all right there, and die trying. I took up my place in front of him, willing to unravel all over again if I had to. Demon dogs be damned.
59
JUDE
“Of course,Scooby brought all his friends,” I muttered. My mind raced through useless options. If I ran, maybe they’d chase me. Give Angel a chance to… to what? He was shivering, the aftermath of that terrifying shadow-form clearly leaching the strength from his body. My experience with his leopard was useless here. The library didn’t exactly stock half a cow for supernatural recovery.
And what was that? That creature of liquid night and fury? How had he… become that?
The circle of hellhounds tightened, a slow, predatory creep that left molten pockmarks on the stone. A few scattered books caught fire at the edges, their pages curling into black ash. Nat was going to murder me a second time over the state of his library. The lead beast, a monster of swirling ember and shadow, locked its furnace-coal gaze on Angel.
Oh, hell no.He was mine. Not some supernatural dog chow.
“Hey! Shit-for-breath!” I yelled. I spread my arms wide in a blatant, stupid challenge between Angel and the advancing pack. “The living guy is off the menu. It’s me you want, right? The demon spawn? At least that’s what my parents always insisted.”
“Jude, don’t!” Angel protested, reaching for me as if to keep me behind him, but his hands went right through me.
The lead monster’s head swiveled. Its molten jaws unhinged with a wet, grinding sound like boulders being crushed deep in the earth. A promise-filled snarl vibrated through the floor; its full, annihilating attention now locked on me.
I couldn’t even begin to fathom how to fight?—
It launched. A silent blur of dripping fang and condensed fury, aimed straight for my spectral throat.
I let out a scream more of rage than fear, the bond between Angel and me tightening as if my shield around him activated. The world froze.
For a single beat I thought somehow I’d stopped them as time and movement suspended.
The hounds hung in the air around us, a dozen snarling statues of violence and terror. Drops of molten saliva hovered in a lethal constellation, each one an inch from burning through my spectral form. The crackle of burning books vanished, but Angel’s ragged, exhausted breaths continued to heave at my back, the only sound in the silence.
Then, a single bolt of neon-blue lightning snapped into existence before us, not striking the ground but holding in the air. From the heart of that blaze,heslid into being, as if stepping through a tear in reality itself.
Whathewas, I could only process as other. Agod? A furious guardian of this archive, finally come to evict the unruly trespassers? His presence blanketed the space with a chilling, immense weight that felt like the end of every argument, the final word on every page. For several long seconds, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All I could do was stare, utterly and completely stunned.
He was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with Angel’s warm, human vitality. Angel’s beauty was home, solid and real.
This entity possessed the lethally elegant, cold perfection of a masterwork sword in a museum. Breathtaking and utterly untouchable like some ancient fae prince, or otherworldly vampire god of seducers. His features, sharp and symmetrical enough to border on androgyny, were saved from delicacy by the subtle, powerful lines of a jaw that hinted at coiled strength, and by a gaze as dark and assessing as a starless sky. His hair was a waterfall of ink-black, save for a single, dramatic silver braid swept to the side, revealing an ear adorned with an intricate collection of piercings and dangling, dark gemstones.
He wore a robe the color of a starless midnight. The style was something out of the most opulent danmei covers with layers of dark fabric cinched at a trim waist, and falling from shoulders that promised strength and battle experience. It all culminated in tall, black boots dusted with tiny, glittering gems like captured stardust.
He towered over Angel and me, not as massive as Xavier, but with a presence that filled the library. He was handsome in the way a lightning strike is beautiful. A sight that inspires awe right before it incinerates everything you hold dear.
